Monday, January 7, 2013

Existentialism and the Ideal Religion

I’ve thrown around the word “existentialism” a lot in my
writings, and it’s time to consider directly the relevance of existentialism to
the philosophy I’m working out here. For a good summary of existentialism, I recommend
the article in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, especially
sections two and three.

The Philosophy of Existentialism

The most widely-known kind of existentialism begins with the
phenomenologicalmethod of describing how things seem to the conscious self and then
draws ontological conclusions based on those descriptions. Thus, the
existentialist takes for granted the anthropocentric structure of the
first-person perspective and contrasts objective with subjective orders of
being. Tools lying in the environment are “ready-to-hand,” meaning that their
mode of being is instrumental, that they exist for conscious users, whereas the
conscious self is absolutely primary and central from that first-personal,
solipsistic perspective. Moreover, from that perspective, the self seems autonomous, and the existentialist
builds an ethics of personal authenticity, or integrity, on this apparent
freewill. When we introspect, we don’t detect an objective cause of our
conscious state, precisely because we don’t perceive--again within that
first-person perspective--the self as an object in the field of material causes
and effects; after all, the five senses that perceive that material field are
all directed outwards and so we don’t process our impression of the conscious
self as informing us about just another material object. On the contrary, the
self is experienced as being detached from the physical world and thus as free
from its laws. So even when the body is clearly affected, say, by drinking
alcohol or being punched in the stomach, and the brain is affected which in
turn has an impact on consciousness, the conscious self still seems free to
decide how to respond to such effects.

The ultimate feeling of freedom is found in the experience
of anxiety, when we detach from our
practical concerns and come to grips with the subjective arbitrariness of
values and social conventions. In that case of alienation, we have difficulty identifying with the social roles we
play and just as consciousness seems to itself detached from the body, a person
can feel detached from society. Ethics enter into the picture when the
existentialist distinguishes between those who accept their freedom and who
commit to their life project with integrity, and those who fail to act so
responsibly and ignore what we all learn from the first-person perspective,
that is, from introspection. Again, what we learn is that when a self fails to
define herself by choosing a life path and owning that choice without
scapegoating anything, and when she allows herself to be defined by society,
her religion, or anything else as though she had no voluntary role to play, she
loses her individuality. She becomes an inauthentic
person, a subject who pretends to be an object. Thus, existentialism is about
the philosophical problem of existing as a human being in the first place, or
as this problem is informed by introspection.

Critique of Existentialism

Now you might think that this existential method of just describing
how things naïvely seem and then of taking that level of description at face
value is just intellectually reckless. For example, work in cognitive science
and in philosophy of mind, including R. Scott Bakker’s Blind Brain Theory, shows that how things seem to consciousness can be quite illusory. Just because introspection
can’t detect the neural causes of conscious states doesn’t mean there are none;
instead, consciousness may seem self-sufficient merely because, as Bakker says,
the brain lacks the needed information to properly map its operations with the
same level of detail with which it maps the outer environment. So everything we
think we perceive from the first-person perspective might be illusory. The
question is whether this is entirely an empirical matter. Could cognitive
science demonstrate that conscious states are entirely erroneous compared to
third-personal, scientific reports of what’s happening at the neurofunctional
level?

I tend to adopt a relaxed neo-Kantian position with respect
to this sort of question. The human brain does support a first-person
perspective, thus adding to what naturally exists at the neurological level.
From the perspective of brain science, introspection can seem to depend on
ignorance, but so too neurology can seem parochial and simplistic from, say,
the physicist’s perspective. Natural processes seem to build on themselves and so
levels of reality emerge. One such
level is that of how a conscious self naively seems to itself. Even if we
partially construct that level of reality, by participating in the cultural
interpretation of the nature of the inner self, the data obtained by
introspection must still be explained. Even cognitive science grants the
reality of those data and merely prefers one interpretation of them to another.
But whether a neurological explanation, say, of love is superior to a
novelistic, first-personal analysis of what the emotion feels like, depends on
the purposes at issue, and this is a normative question that can’t be
scientifically settled. If values and ideals
themselves are illusory, there’s no reason to favour any explanation of data, and a scientific rejection of the validity
of introspection thereby eats its tail. I say, though, that my Kantian position
is “relaxed,” because I leave open the possibility that, for pragmatic reasons,
we may come to reject the subjective description of consciousness, just as
we’ve rejected many superstitions once science has given us new ways to think.
For example, if technoscience holds forth the promise of transhumanity, of
divinizing the self, if only we end our preoccupation with the layperson’s
understanding of herself, we may either choose to think of ourselves only
scientifically (ultrarationally) or be forced to do so as elements of some
natural process.

The upshot of this is that, for the moment at least, I think
we should take the first-personal ontology seriously without being so
deferential to it (as in theism) that we define the self in a way that’s
opposed to science and to philosophical naturalism. Thus, I think we are conscious, free, rational, and so
anxious or authentic as the case may be, but only to a surprisingly limited extent; in
particular, we tend to exaggerate the ego’s properties, and cognitive science
does show, at the very least, that the naïve picture of the self is incomplete, and that when supplemented
by scientific details we become less boastful and more inclined to think of the
conscious self as partly, if not yet entirely, a hallucination.

Existentialism and Transhumanism

But how do the basic existential categories fit into the
philosophy of Rants Within the Undead God? The existentialist takes
introspection and freewill to be philosophically central, whereas I begin with my
understanding of the scientific picture of the world. In existentialism,
anxiety arises as an emotional proof of our freedom: we experience ourselves as
isolated and so condemned to freely, independently choose our direction in
life. To my way of thinking, anxiety arises not just from introspection but
from Reason, from the objective view from nowhere which presents
to us the world in all its strange inhumanity. Anxiety is generated by the
clash between the naïve conception of the self, arrived at through
introspection, and the sophisticated, scientific explanation of nature. We feel
isolated and estranged from the world when we compare what we naively think we are
with what we really are, as described at some deeper level. And whereas the
existentialist thinks of authenticity, the chief virtue, as the honest way of
handling our freedom, I think of this virtue of integrity as a requirement of
artistic originality in dealing with that clash between perspectives. Nature
builds on itself in its undead complexifications and evolutions, and we should attest
to our mystifying presence in the universe by adding a new level of reality,
one that creatively reconciles our two main sources of information,
introspection and reason. I say “creatively,” because the standards aren’t
merely epistemic. It’s not enough for a worldview to accurately reflect the
facts; the worldview should inspire with the power of myth and so should be
aesthetically profound. The blueprint of
the new level of reality is the philosophical worldview that lays out the ideas
that inspire a new religious way of life, one guided by the twin virtues of
authenticity (integrity and distaste for delusions) and creativity (originality
in contributing to the process of technoscientifically deifying our species).

The role of the artistic, mythical dimension of a worldview
is to motivate masses of people to take up certain life projects, and this is
either a fully natural process that serves the undead god or a process of
existential revolt. Our best, most authentic life project might be to prepare
for the advent of the posthuman, as
Nietzsche said. That is, our most helpful, satisfying form of creativity might
be to explain the world in such a way that we can anticipate and take comfort
in the ultimate fruit of technoscience: the transhuman force of nature, which
is the biological human body’s complete merging with more and more powerful
technology. Authenticity for the transhuman would be the marking of its
presence, in opposition to nature’s self-destructive tendencies, by literally
transforming as much of nature as possible and so undoing what looks like the
creation of an insane and suicidal divine monarch. That reengineering of
nature, that negation of undead decay might well be our highest goal as a
species, and the gods that could carry out such a project might fulfill our
highest potential. Thus, our merely-human task should be to appreciate the
value of that potential in us, not so much to prove how and when the transhuman
revolution will happen, as in Ray Kurzweil’s crass manner, but to take up
transhumanism as a thought experiment, to test our convictions. What I’m after,
then, is a religion that’s not just compatible with science, but that inspires
the noblest use of science. It’s not enough to have vast knowledge; we have to
know what to do with our model of nature. It goes without saying that none of
the mainstream religions ought to guide us in that endeavor, although the
Eastern ones are more useful because they provide process rather than
atomistic, individualistic theologies. Meanwhile, liberal secular humanism is a
whitewash of the cosmicist implications of philosophical naturalism. Obviously,
though, I don’t claim to provide the ideas of the great future religion, but am
merely speculating on some preconditions.

What, then, is personal inauthenticity?
The bad life, in my view, is defined by delusion,
because delusion dehumanizes us. Instead of lifting us up to the transhuman, we
can regress to a subhuman, purely animalistic state. We regress when we
surrender our creative potential, when we submit to some degrading ideology
such as that of the capitalistic monoculture which serves the twisted
oligarchs. Now, there is a Nietzschean reading of oligarchy, which is that the
centralization of power is a necessary evil: the masses must toil in various
industries so that power can be amassed and eventually the amorality of those
steering the major technoscientific companies will lead to breakthroughs that
will divinize at least a minority of people. Thus, as I’ve said, the
sociopathic oligarchs might be avatars of the undead god, amorally creating and
destroying sectors of the economy. But there’s a problem with these
oligarchs: their natural corruption effectively deprives them of a conscience
and thus of the strength of feeling needed to appreciate great art. They are
thus poor creators; to be sure, they’re ruthless in pursuing their ambition and
they’re not held back by obsolete moral sentiments, but I lack faith in their
creative vision. The Western monoculture which they’ve sustained for the masses
lowers the bar instead of elevating people’s expectations. The dehumanization
of the majority may be a necessarily evil stage in the natural development of
the transhuman, but to worship gods you need a myth that has emotional
resonance, and it’s hard to sing the praises of capitalistic oligarchs even if they
do work towards our apotheosis.

Where does asceticism
fit into this worldview? I’ve said that renunciation of certain natural processes
makes for a noble revolt against the undead god’s mindless disintegrations.
This is the mystic’s venerable kind of authenticity. The Gnostic idea is that
nature is a pit of despair rather our true home, and that we should psychologically
detach ourselves from nature, to appreciate that we truly belong nowhere that’s comprehensible, which is
the transcendent state of nirvana. I don’t go in for this particular kind of
mysticism. I do think we’re doomed to be homeless, since Reason evicts us from
most of the fantasy worlds we build for ourselves. Even in the futuristic,
pantheistic and naturalistic religion I’m contemplating, there’s an existential
spirit of revolt. But I don’t think consciousness is ontologically primary. I’m
open to the possibility that there was once a transcendent being that we can
idolize by personifying it, as long as we concede, with Philipp Mainlander,
that such a being is best thought of as having been corrupted by his isolation
and so having killed himself in “creating” the natural universe. But the major
god that’s obviously manifest in all creative acts is the undead, self-creating
god of nature itself. Ironically, the undead god would undo its decay through
the transhuman force of nature.

Still, even without the full Eastern mystical backdrop, renunciation
(of pop culture, sex, politically correct conventions, theistic delusions,
feel-good myths) helps to immunize us in dark times and to preserve our
creative spirit. In decadent, anesthetizing cultures, we may be wise to unplug
from the matrix, and this entails some degree of detachment. Naturally, I’m not
saying we should all live as hermits. Indeed, a hermit wouldn’t be privy to
advances in modern science and so couldn’t fully participate in the supreme
religion that will hopefully arrive. Nevertheless, any detachment is better than none, even if we merely stop and
remind ourselves--while in the throes of sex, voting for a pathological liar,
or watching an inane movie that’s dominating the box office--that we shouldn’t identify with such a degrading activity.
When we prove weak-willed and submit to one cultural indignity or another, we
should at least mock ourselves in the back of our mind, contrasting the vain,
pompous mammals we are at our worst with the sublime, all-powerful and
all-knowing posthuman force of nature that our consciousness, freedom and
rationality could unleash upon God’s undying corpse.

3 comments:

I will return to this blog (not finished reading) but I thought that existentialism is only one possible reply to existential nihilism, or the thesis that life lacks intrinsic meaning.

The several possible replies are as follows:

reject the thesis, and then conceive of the meaning of life. (theism)Accept the thesis, and complain that it is horrible (pessimism)Accept the thesis, and revel in it (nihilism)Abstain from accepting or rejecting it, by admitting that the meaning of life is unknowable, or ineffable. Because there aren't any metaphysical or psychological consolations that aren't trivial, because all we have are our own understandings.

Then again, as an absurdist, one rebels against the absurd and establish her lucidity in the middle of what negates it. The absurdist exalts herself before what will crush her. In her freedom and passion, revolt comes together in lucidity. No solution is possible - then again, perhaps no solution is necessary.

Of course you're right, there's more than one possible response. This article is about the ideal one, from my viewpoint. I'm still thinking about nihilism and I plan to write something specifically on Emil Cioran's version.

What you say about the absurdist exalting before what will crush her reminds me of the cultist characters in H.P. Lovecraft's stories, the sort of mad worshipers of the inhuman forces/gods, like the way Silver Surfer should have been as the servant of Galactus. Now that I think of it, maybe that's worth a comparison: the calm, cool Silver Surfer vs the deranged Lovecraftian cultist. I suppose the difference is between brooding, Buddhist Stoicism and a kind of gallows humour, or zest for the absurd, like the fool in King's Lear who knows everything but goes insane from the knowledge.

Sorry, I'm thinking out loud here. But I like it when I get ideas for articles, from engaging with reader's comments. So thanks for your thoughts!

Emil Cioran, excellent choice. If you have the time, please check my paper on him i wrote a couple of years ago:

http://www.hyperboreans.com/heterodoxia/?p=179

The silver surfer as a great absurdist hero is an excellent choice: perhaps this was far more pronounced as a Herald of Galactus, forced to choose worlds with life to destruction to serve an implacable force of cosmos. Kirby/Lee probably weren't conscious of the absurdist elements, and didn't really play it up in their run, though.

I've finished reading the blog. It was a refreshing take of existentialism beyond the standard interpretation, although I wonder if you went with a caricature that resembles Sartre's version from his Existentialism and Humanism book, instead of a more well-rounded version that accepted certain deterministic elements in existential ontology.

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About the Author

In this blog you'll find my philosophical rants within the undead god. What on earth is the "undead god," you ask, and why do I rant within it? Read on and find out or just look at how the planet and all of nature mindlessly evolve, setting the stage for our existential predicament. In the big picture, who I am doesn't matter at all and when I write here I write mostly with the big picture in mind. But if you're curious about some of my interests, see my blogger profile.